1. Field
Apparatuses consistent with the present invention relate to a microfluidic device having a microfluidic structure for flowing a fluid to analyze an ingredient of a sample using a reaction between the sample and a reagent.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of methods for analyzing samples have been developed in various applied fields such as environmental monitoring, food tests, and medical diagnosis. Existing test methods require numerous manual operations and various apparatuses. To perform a test according to a predetermined protocol, an experienced tester needs to manually perform a variety of steps such as reagent loading, mixing, separation and movement, reactions, and centrifuges, several times. Therefore, errors may be easily generated when obtaining results of the test.
Accordingly, an experienced clinical pathologist is needed to quickly perform a test. However, even an experienced clinical pathologist has lots of difficulties in simultaneously performing various tests. For example, in the diagnosis of an urgent case, a quick test result is very important for performing quick emergency treatment. Thus, there is a demand for an apparatus capable of quickly and accurately performing various pathological tests needed according to various situations.
A large and expensive automated apparatus is used for a related art pathological test and a relatively large amount of a test material such as blood is required. Accordingly, a test result may be issued from as long as two days to two weeks after the test material is obtained from a patient.
To address this problem, a compact and automated apparatus has been developed which may quickly analyze a test material(s) obtained from one or more patients if necessary. For example, when blood is loaded in a disk type microfluidic device and the disk type microfluidic device is rotated, serum is separated from the blood due to a centrifugal force. The separated serum is mixed with a predetermined amount of dilution buffer and moved to a plurality of reaction chambers in the disk type microfluidic device. Different reagents are previously loaded in the reaction chambers for different blood test items so that the different reagents react to the serum to present a predetermined color. Blood analysis may be performed by detecting a change in the color.